Govt to revamp laws on intellectual property rights
Govt to revamp laws on intellectual property rights
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's laws regarding intellectual property
rights will soon be adjusted to standards stipulated in the
Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPs) under the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Director General of Copy Rights and Intellectual Property at
the Ministry of Justice A. Zen Umar Purba said on Tuesday his
office had just completed an evaluation of the planned revisions
to the existing Copy Rights Law, Patent Law and Trademark Law.
"We have also prepared three draft bills on Industrial Design,
Layout Design of Integrated Circuits and Undisclosed
Information," Zen said at an intellectual property seminar
organized by the Faculty of Law at the University of Indonesia.
"We hope the draft laws and revisions of existing laws will
have been enacted by January, 2000, the year TRIPs come into
effect."
Other speakers at the seminar included the dean of the
University of Indonesia's Faculty of Law, Abdul Bari Azed, the
president of the Indonesian Intellectual Property Foundation,
Chandra N. Darusman, and several business leaders.
Chandra said the intellectual property bill needed further
promotion to increase public awareness of the importance of
copyrights, patents and trademarks.
"Public awareness of the concept that intellectual property
has a price needs to be propagated," he said.
YKCI, founded in the early nineties, is a nonprofit
organization for the protection and administration of the rights
of composers and publishers of music.
The organization charges fees to businesses that make use of
music to support their business activities.
They include television and radio stations, restaurants
and transportation companies.
"We collected about Rp 3 billion (about US$448,000) in fees in
1998, as compared to Rp 3.2 billion in the previous year,"
Chandra said.
He said fees collected were distributed proportionately to
composers and publishers of the music.
Zen said his office had since 1998 worked hard to publicize
intellectual property rights through various forums such as
discussions and seminars involving people from all walks of life.
"The Ministry of Justice will increase cooperation with the
national police to strengthen law enforcement against breaches in
intellectual property rights."
He said revenue collected by his office from applicants of
intellectual property rights had steadily increased by an annual
average of 120 percent since 1994.
He said his directorate general had also ratified five
international conventions regarding intellectual property rights
in anticipation of the free trade era.
The five conventions are the Paris Convention for the
Production of Industrial Property, Patent Cooperation Treaty,
Trademarks Law Treaty, Bern Convention for the Production of
Literary and Artistic Work and World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty. (udi)